Nacatl
by kiyotaka420
Summary: Nacatl, n. - Nahuatl for meat. Ameya Thakore is the special agent designated to replace Will Graham; his penchant for logos rather than pathos makes him a viable replacement. Though it seems like he can detach himself from any situation and stay safe in his own orbit, Dr. Lecter is assured that his faith in God will be his downfall.
1. wicked wisdom

_We think an awful lot alike._

_I peel back the shells of eggs with my fingertips and dig nails into vitreous, solidified whites. It smells like sulfur and I can already see the greenish film covering the yolk. He runs a knife through radishes, expertly holding the tiny red bulbs with his deft fingers and prying away the skin and etching out roses and flowers; each finished product is neatly placed in a bowl of sediment-laden ice water. Bobbing apples. Aztec hearts. He'll take them to wash, later, and then dip them in vinegar briefly to ensure they do not brown. _

"_Don't you think empathy is a disease?" I ask, and I wipe my hands on my pants, to which he looks disappointed as he gestures to the towel only a few inches from my elbow. He doesn't answer the question, but his silence spurns me to elaborate: "would you consider, then, an abundance of it a disease, a disorder?"_

_Money has trickled into this kitchen for years and solidified like stalactites, carving through rock and wood and granite countertops. For a moment, I don't think he's heard me, and that'd be uncharacteristic of someone who I infer is as meticulously keen as he is; he answers me right as I begin to restate my question._

"_I don't see why you seem bent on verifying it as an affliction," he says, voice neutral, and he seems to figure that conversation has no place in cooking. He sets the bowl aside, and he assumes his professional stance, the barren wall of tight skin and aging bones as porous as limestone. I feel like I'm being interrogated—which, I guess, I might be, given his nature. He's a terrible conversation partner; he asks questions and lets you feel stupid on your own accord. "I would assume, though, that—if one was to go on the __blandest__ sort of description—empathy is an evolutionary failure. Instinct and adaption bred us to be most capable and wholeheartedly interested in our own perseverance and not much more; if you spend so much of your time identifying with others, what time is left to think for your own future and your best interest? You and I could learn a thing or two from solipsists," he murmurs, and his voice is low and pious, a sacrosanct saint, a priest in church. I like that about him; the religion that hovers above his head like a golden motto, a byzantine halo, is tantalizing and romantic. The muted blues and conservative shoes and invisible cross hanging around his neck, oil-shined prayer beads glistening like fresh pearls from how often he rolls them between the pads of his fingers and thinks about God—does he thank Him for his daily bread? I think that he might have more important things on mind: radishes, me, murders to solve. I think he thanks God for small things, like the spiders in the hallway and car accidents that only injure and don't kill. He seems the type. I'm still too small to talk to God. _

"_You could also argue that empathy is one of the few factors that sets us as a species apart from animals and creatures, something that led us to create civilization and the variable that led to the basis of a desire for justice and liberty, the nature of your profession: the ability to identify with our fellow man. __Fellow__ man." He stresses, and it sounds like a lecture. He is very pleasing to the eye, his eyes, my eyes, God's eyes, when he says this, a balanced scale. Libra. Justice. Blind justice; I think he is pleasing to everyone's eyes with the blind as an exception. The way he refuses to take a side would normally irk me, but it just makes him seem wise, above a mere human like me, like he actually manifested roses out of vegetables and dirty water instead of just chopping them up into that shape. His myopic nature is incredible; no distinct solution or decision, but yet I understand that he knows exactly what he's saying. _

"_That is true," I verify, and his expression is unreadable as he goes back to preparation. My name comes from his lips and I like to think he'd say hymns with the same lilt and tone—__Ameya__—Doctor, that's spotless pronunciation, by the way—and he asks if I can check the oven's temperature for him. _


	2. dangerous blues

I'm a replacement.

I don't think too much about it, however: when your dog dies, you get a new one. Though perhaps you can't upgrade the model and because you hold sentimentality for the old one, it's less of a replacement than a substitution. I don't mind that euphemism.

I hear a lot of stories about this faction. The specificity is irrelevant, I think, because it gets warped like hot plastic as it passes from mouth to mouth. Make something into a myth, I guess, and further delude the horrors already present in the current. We tend to possess some fleeting hope of a benevolent God peering down at us through gauzy tulle and feathered clouds, that the righteous will always be shepherded to safety and washed ashore in the sand, and the wrongdoers of earth are permitted to wreck a controlled amount of havoc if not just to teach the rest of us to be on our good behavior. Each individual treats themselves like the protagonist, that the forces of fate churn and turn like clockwork against him, his moral compass indefinitely fixated on the path of true enlightenment and purpose: if he fails his quest, anyways, he's a martyr. A win-win situation. By this logic, I could do anything, and justify that it was the right thing to do.

My purpose isn't definite, though. I don't have time to think of that. Let myself get absorbed in some stale gobs of philosophical muck—that's hardly worth the scum on my shoes. Take each second as an active pursuit towards an attainable goal, and then, after completed, develop a new one: I'll make my own purpose, carve it out of ivory and marble. I won't let anything else sway me.

That's what happened to him, though: empathy settled like liquid gold in his guts and steadily cooled until it was too heavy to bear. Great pain and suffering, his moral compass shattering like a heel to a locket—I can't really say I'm excited, but I'm certainly looking forward to reading about Will Graham's analyses, to find out the science and psychology to a man who claimed anything with little more than some great desire for magic miracles and a fanciful imagination. That didn't work out too well: with nothing to ground himself on, he just rotted away and never even knew his feet were leaving the floor.

Pathos is the ugly cousin of logos. Tattlecrime's favorite Graham quote was, "I just interpret the evidence," but the lapse in definitions leads me to think otherwise: paraphrased, he means "I just make up stuff based on what I think."

Plan B, I guess.

The door opens, my steepled fingers and off-focus gaze fixated on the wall facing me is lulled back into the sharpened, vivid world of reality. I don't indulge in day dreams, but I'd be exhausted if I allowed myself to criticize every little thing I came across. There he is, a grim-faced man with the chiseled features of a toad-mouthed Carthaginian general, pock-marked like a medieval king: I wasn't expecting more, but I can't exactly place what brand of disappointment begins to drip into my guts as he sees me, nods, and says with half-hearted pleasantry, "come in."

And I do so, my feet dragging across the floor, a sigh clotting in my throat as my back cracks and I card fingers into my hair and brush it away from my eyes. Modest office, modest chair, a modestly-dressed man: I'm underwhelmed, if anything.

"I'm glad you made it," he states, pleasant enough, and it doesn't come close to breaking the ice. I settle down, and I manage to smile, at least out of courtesy. My teeth feel like a horse's.

"It was no problem," I state, "and I was surprised that you'd request me. I didn't have the slightest clue that my sphere of influence, per se, extended so far off what I considered the edge of the Earth."

He still looks like a toad. I can't tell if he's annoyed or he doesn't understand my convoluted, badly-worded comment: either way, he nods carefully, acknowledging that he heard me but he's weary that I'm not going to be up to par to Will Graham, moody and distasteful, an emotional wreck of an adult. Maybe I should start shaking, sweating, licking my lips and rubbing my neck like I'm certain a swarm of mosquitos is after my blood. "You have incredible credentials, you know," he reminds me, "and I know for a fact that you graduated at the top of your class. Valedictorian, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many years ago?"

"One, sir."

"Been out in the field yet?"

"Not often, sorry."

Then he nods, mulling over his decision (or at least giving the appearance of it, because I know for a fact that he wouldn't do something as stupid as call me over to give me an interview and waste his time with nothing more than an attempt instead of the beginning of an action), before he exhales, looking intent, lacing fingers together as he places his hands on the desk and aligns himself rigidly. Professional. Curt. Reminding me that I'm no Will Graham, that I'm the second choice, that I'm going to have to work twice as hard and perform twice as well because I'm not his friend, not the way _he_ was. That's fine. Whatever. "I'm certain you've heard of the cases we've been working on, both past and present. The level of…" he pauses, as if I'm a frail piece of spun sugar like Will Graham was, that the wrong word is going to crush me like a snail's shell. "The grotesque and macabre nature of the cases we deal with often require incredibly emotionally strong agents, those who possess keen stability and a grounded worldview. The goal is to not get involved, because involvement and injection into the situation causes…" his voice slithers to a stop, and he steps up his game, refusing to show any cracks in the sturdy foundation of his ethos. A shabby brick building slathered with some paint. "It causes _great distress_ and often is emotionally overwhelming."

"I understand, sir. I've already had several evaluations and have been determined as incredibly emotionally stable. I have no history with any mental illness or trouble." I wish he'd cut to the chase, but I see him painting a portrait of my offer to ensure I vividly understand that, after he casts the line and I plummet into this garbage, it's my responsibility not to get too weighted down so the line snaps. Keep my head above the water. Don't end up like Will Graham 2.0.

"That's reassuring," he reminds me, and there's a lilt of _sincerity_ in his tone, "that's very reassuring. Mr. Thakore, correct?"

"Yes, sir, Ameya Thakore." The name plummets from his lips like a lead ball, and I feel my jaw tighten with the way he pronounces it. _Tha-core. _I make as much effort as I can, obnoxious accent like a wannabe troubadour, to say _Tha-koh-reh._

"Well, Mr. Thakore," he sighs, as if he's resigned, that there is really nothing else to turn to or discuss and he'd rather have me far away as to never develop emotional attachment to another expendable lab rat ever, ever, ever again, and he stands, offers me his hand, curtly shakes mine and shows me the door. "I'd like you to consult on a case." The look of bewilderment must be grotesquely apparent on my face, because he gives a halfhearted look of sarcastic imitation. "Now. Nothing engaging, just taking a look at some evidence." I agree, I nod, he tells me to follow him and I grab the jacket off the back of my chair and hoist it over my arm as I trail behind him down a hall.

You never really consider schisms between separate eras in your life, when you finally stop seeing anything interesting in playing outside, when you realize that you're a teenager not in physical age but in fucked-up mental mindset, when you go through your early-quarter-life-crisis and panic because you're going to die sooner than you thought. At this point, walking down the halls, arms folded across my chest and my eyes trained on the lumbering back of a man who looks like a bump on a log, I didn't consider this much more than work, what I got myself into.

I doubt I regret anything I do in my life. I don't have time for that.


	3. water curses

A stonier mien, a more serious visage, chiseled tight like shrink-wrapped plastic around a skull—my bones feel like porous calcium. I'm under surveillance.

Picture after picture line the walls, like I'm supposed to toss a dart and nail one of them straight in the nose. My aim isn't that good, I'm starting to realize the magnitude of this situation, and I can hardly meet anyone's eyes: they're all dead. Though distant, it feels poignantly reverberating, like the veins around my guts begin to tighten and choke my innards: is this real? Are all these people dead? I feel a distinct lack of concern which only further frightens me—empathy should be steeping through my veins, seeping out of my lips in a perfumed breath of concerned and sincerely mortified rose petals, and if not petals, then tumbling down like gallstones from a slit stomach. My mouth feels dry, my throat feels thin—I nod, approvingly, as if I'm already drawing deduction after deduction, before I realize one pair of the stony set eyes fixated on me belongs to a living creature.

He looks like melted waxwork that was dressed in spare couch covers. I barely swallow a laugh and gag it down, a flitting smile gracing my visage, and I'd dare have the deign to classify him as something to be detested rather than respected if I hadn't appreciated the aura surrounding him.

Not literally, of course. There are no pentecostal tongues of fire flickering down from heaven and gracing his head like a crown, but the deep vibrations of saintly wisdom seep from his pores like a miasma. I'm awestruck, and I can't place why—I'd sooner think he was just another middle aged, graying man, trapped in a dingy building and making a living off saving lives if I didn't feel that strange sort of seeping sentimentality to him.

I stare, though impolite. I was raised as a Vaishnavite, and Christian imagery is still somewhat jarring to me: I think of Saint Cassian, of a pious martyr, of stern-lipped saints with swiveling, roving eyes lining the walls of Notre Dame.

What a peculiar reaction that such a simple person incites from me. I extend my hand, and I feel extremely boyish as I grasp his, blue and green veins laced over the tendons exposed by his pallid flesh. My throat itches, my bones ache, my blood feels effervescent: why is such a stupid looking man, some ugly anachronism, reverberating with what could only be described as _pietism? _

"Dr. Lecter, this is Ameya Thakore, the special agent now assisting in the Ripper's case. He's got some impressive credentials," he states, pleasantries exuding from his mouth like a register spitting out a receipt, and I nod as my voice catches in my throat. I feel boyish in his presence. He's so much older than me, but not in a way where I deem him oafish and old-fashioned, but somewhat _mocking_. Like I'm infantile, jejune. He looks expectant, and the cast of his eyes on me make my skin feel hot and rashed—I have no way to determine impressions other than what I feel. I cannot interpret what I feel. I can interpret what I know.

"Nice to meet you, sir," I say, and he greets me with equal sterility.

"Dr. Lecter is working as one of our profilers—I'm certain you've heard of him," Jack continues, and while he further ventures to describe his credentials and exploits, inserting smears of praise and recommendation wherever possible: so they're friends. I feel like I walked into a funeral, and they all mourn Will Graham while simultaneously trying to absorb me as a new limb to replace their loss. It's uncomfortable, but not unbearable; Jack begins to name victims, list taken organs (Will Graham indicates that pre-mortem mutilation and the removal of internal organs as surgical trophies is a token attribute of the ripper, which is _so obvious_, I don't know why people want to lick his shoes for drawing the most logical conclusion possible of all these dead people), describe locations found. I nod, rapt with interest, though only on the surface: they're all too deeply affected by the tragedy at hand. I have no experience of it. I see it in their tones, their censoring, their hesitance: they are emotionally incapacitated by the weight of these murders and how it tolled on their friend.

I want to scoff. Not out of arrogance, but to knock them out of this stupor. Empathy reminds me of rot, and they're all fermenting in their own self-pity and worries. Despite Mr. Crawford's rehearsed diatribe and evident lack of mentioning anything that too deeply involves Will Graham's work prior to my arrival, Dr. Lecter seems stagnant, distant. Jesus looks down on people receiving communion with neither hate nor adoration. How tailored he looks, how prim and proper—I can't even fathom what I would give to emulate that. He looks like he _knows_ things that we could only hope to understand, that he's decoded every riddle and is only here to ensure that we don't get too bogged down in the inevitable discovery. It's in his eyes, his shoulders, the tendons in his face and the locked position of his jaw: interpret, don't imagine. I don't envision myself in his head. I see what I see, and I draw my conclusions.

"Do you know the occupations of all the victims, sir?" I say, and Jack Crawford indicates to the case file arranged neatly for my taking. I nod, I thank him, I pick it up and I leaf through it. "I'll look into it. I've been following this case, I'm certain I'll be of help. However, with all this evidence, no patterns can be confirmed—at least, none that I can assist with—until there is another victim. Verification comes with presence and I can't exactly verify much only with pictures and sparse information."

"Sparse?" Crawford questions, sounding incredulously offended though somewhat amazed that I have the insolence to insult his record keeping, but he doesn't do much more than nod. "The point of this is to prevent another victim, Mr. Thakore."

And I purse my lips. Too personal. No more lives, he probably thinks, we gotta catch him right now, tonight, today, this second. I want to remind him that I never was personally involved until now and I'm not like Will Graham and I can't look at pictures and string them together, I have to be there, be involved, see the position, be present. But I say nothing. "Of course, sir. I'll do my best." And I excuse myself as fast as possible.

It's sort of an unstated fact that I'll do everything I can on my own time to work on this and accompany them to the next victim—if there is one—where I will assist with profiling. As I pass, I hear that strange lilt, a preacher's drone possessing the malleable morals of all his listeners: Dr. Lecter is speaking. My hand lets go of the knob as I lean close, looking as if I'm resting against the door as I examine my evidence: I hear them. Muted, low-voiced, but I hear them.

"So what do you think?" It's Jack. Assertive and brazen. I can see his pockmarked chin moving carefully with his spotless enunciation.

"Is it necessary to draw conclusions so early?" That's Dr. Lecter. The viscera on my intestines tightens like a tourniquet. "I mind remind you that I'm no mind-reader: I didn't see much more than, most likely, you did. Skittish, though unremarkable, he seems inherently and indisputably average. Intelligent, I suppose, but average."

"I'm not here to make a profile for him," Jack reminds him sternly, "I'm here to see if he's going to absorb the magnitude of this all as much as Will did. I specifically selected him for his penchant for logos instead of pathos—it was noted he's distant in regards to others."

"Depersonalization of tragedy," Lecter ventures, and I hear his shoes shuffle, dark oxfords against the hardwood floor, and I can almost envision his padded shoulders moving under the suit as he adjusts his arms to limply lay at his sides. "A lack of empathy is the parallel of Will's abundance: though, I suppose, this will allow him to carefully construct a barrier between the deaths he is to absorb and the killers he is to find, it's uncertain whether a dam will hold back a typhoon. You and I possess experience that he does not."

There's a pause, and for a moment, I'm terrified they'll open the door. However, Jack exhales, and Lecter makes the slightest humming noise in the back of his throat, as if sympathizing with his worry. "He creates an 'it' when dealing with suffering instead of a 'they.' The detachment will almost certainly ensure he doesn't end up in the same position as Will. A young prodigy, a bright student with a promising future, untapped potential and a refusal to gain anything but from hard work," he muses, and the compliments make my heart flutter. He sounds like he's congratulating a child, but it came from someone who I can't help but to admire, to fear, to worship. "I could draw a conclusion."

"About him?"

"About you."

I pause. The collar of my shirt feels rough against my neck, my skin feels like hot rubber.

"I don't need you to say it," Jack amends, and I can practically see him, looking at the floor, guilt stooping his posture, Lecter standing rigid and unwavering. "Miriam Lass was a tragedy. She cared too much. Will cared too much. He looks like he doesn't care about much more than getting this finished so he can put it on his credentials. He is no repeat Miriam or repeat Will—and I'm certain of this! My judgment is sound, and that's part of the reason why I picked him: I know he'll stay far enough away as to not get personally involved. The deaths of the victims are a tragedy enough, I don't need to be personally reminded that my shortcomings take the lives of people who trusted me," he states, and I think I've heard enough. Footsteps come closer, I feel the unwavering presence of a human form lumbering behind the door. I step away, walk down the hall, turn the corner and vanish out of sight.

I feel like scum, a bug pinned to a board as they argue about what genus I come from. Part of me wants to prove them wrong—slivers of pride, vanity, I suppose—part of me wants to just stay meek and humble. I am something that repeats itself with minimum grace and little variation, a long line of tin soldiers that get less and less emotive and poignant as they turn out. Sloppier, less real, until their carved and etched faces and distinguishing characteristics are all smooth, untouched nothingness.


	4. suspicious character

The conclusions I draw when I'm alone are astounding.

I have a huge list of plausible theories—_organs are typically used in cooking and therefore cannibalism may be a factor to consider, all victims were of varying ethnicity, facial structure, gender, etc. and thus sexual attraction is not a factor, mutilation is done with such great precision that it's almost certain to be someone with medical background and one who possesses professional tools_—and I'm dismayed to later learn that almost all of those had already been previously considered or evaluated. I'm tired, I'm stupid—I'm dazed and I can't breathe, like the corners of my vision are _Space Funeral_-esque static. That's what comes with stress, what comes with pressure: Jack has just called, told me to get on a plane and haul my stale, stupid body over to Virginia this second. Another murder. Ripper-certified, they want me there to do my thing, I've barely gotten settled down in the modest hotel provided when the door rings and I'm still figuring out how to get my arms into a coat.

Everything feels slow, like sap oozing out of a tree, amber solidifying around an ancient bug. I'm almost constantly dismayed with how little I can identify with this, how I hear the call and my first instinct is to fret about myself rather than the implications of another life lost. Am I selfish? I hope not.

I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger.

I open the door and Dr. Lecter is standing there in his strange glory, some ugly man with the bitter face of a lizard but the eyes of a pious dead saint roving their pupils up to God before they finally bleed to death. I smile, conscious of my heavy eyes and my messy hair, looking down at my hands as I step aside. I assume he wants to come in, but I don't really know what to say. I want to tell him some _Rushmore_ trivia, because I always feel like pretending I'm Max Fischer when I'm stuck, but I can't do much more than gag a little as saliva drools down my throat in an effort to speak. "Good morning," I choke, and he seems sympathetic to my plight, offering a somewhat quizzical smile.

"Good morning, Mr. Thakore," he greets, and he stands in the doorway. I wiggle the handle with my hand, wrist rotating like a wheel, fidgeting with great distress. My name breaks through his accent like a nightmare surfacing from water—I don't know how to feel about it. He seems to stand there with the intent of letting me steep, watching me stutter and stammer and run like a rat on a wheel as I attempt to use my glorified superpowers of _logic_ to draw a conclusion as to why he's here.

"I thought I'd drive you—the area is somewhat out of the way, as I unfortunately found, and I'd rather you didn't get lost. Jack suggested that I come get you." A careful pause, as if he's allowing me to process what he's just said. I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm disappointed. I nod, remember my manners, and feel a sloppy smile carve across my face.

"That's really nice. Thank you, Dr. Lecter, sorry for being so much trouble, I, uh, hope this isn't too much, seeing as you'll have to drive me back here after-"

He steps aside, curt, professional, with some edge of distance that makes me uncomfortable. He dissipates my worries like smoke, and I want to feel how tangible he is to ensure he isn't some freak of nature I conjured from a nightmarish miasma. I close the door, tighten my jacket around my body, and I follow him to his car.

He opens the door for me. Some ugly parody of chivalry, I guess, and I murmur my gratitude before I sit down, smell the insides, the distant lingering fragrance of herbs, dust, luxury. It's a nice car, I guess, and I feel bad sitting in it.

"Dr. Lecter, if you were already at the scene, could you describe it to me?" I ask after he pulls out of the parking stall, head swiveling to check behind us, eyes focused and fingers slack as he drives with careful but yet casual precision. Everything about him puts me on edge, like I'm sliding a knife under my skin with the slim hope of preserving capillaries; he answers, "it's perfectly acceptable to call me 'Hannibal.' Professionalism is a virtue of high esteem, but not a necessity that I recommend in situations that call for individuals to work together; I am your colleague, and I would like you to feel comfortable when assisting us. We are, as you can tell, profoundly affected by the tragedy at hand, but you are by no means a mere replacement." I might be terrified that he read my mind, but I'm only intrigued. My eyes focus on the road, and my blood coagulates in my brain. I can't think. Am I that impressionable, so evident, my stupid feelings etched out on my face like a gouache painting?

"Uh, Ameya is fine with me, too," I manage, and he indicates he's heard by nodding.

"Victim is male, and his wallet was left with him—it's a variable we haven't yet observed in relation to killers usually attributed to the ripper, but we are uncertain as to whether or not it was a careless mistake, an intentional lapse or if this is the work of an entirely other killer. Either way, Mr. Vince Vasquez died with severe lacerations to the abdomen and removal of his heart. Though not verified, it's estimated he's been dead for about a day." He pauses, sighs tepidly, and I look at him curiously, so astounded to find emotion oozing through the pores in his rigid visage. I have just met him, but yet I already attribute "emotion" to being uncharacteristic for him to portray. "It's…rather grizzly," he admits, voice unfeeling and unattached. It feels stale, a comment he was saving up at the back of his palate—I'm let down. He seemed so real, so vivid, but his voice is an entirely different wavelength than his expressive face. I don't know what to make of it, so I don't say anything—does he have the same miserable affliction as me, guilt for not being able to sympathize, misery that comes with an inability to properly identify with others? When all your apologies and words of condolence are rehearsed and replayed like a rickety record?

"Oh, I don't doubt that," I say somewhat bitingly, too busy mulling over how I feel about him to catch his fingers tightening around the steering wheel at my audacity.


	5. spiteful intervention

I investigate—I guess. I look around, I tell them to pay attention to certain things, I don't pretend to be Vince Vasquez wheezing in his final moments of breath but I miraculously get the job done. Even Crawford looks impressed with my deductions, and Lecter seems unaffected; that's good enough for me, feeling like I'm bathed in holy light and injected with liquid piety when his eyes rove over me: his attention is _crazy_, like I can't get enough of his approval. His lack of emotion is a test: I want to be the one to incite something out of a marble statue, to force a smile, a grimace, a crack in the foundation of a Hellenistic idol. God is so powerful, and I'm so close to touching him: I stare at his face and the lines in his skin and his pores and his mouth while he talks, bitter hatred and freakish fascination growing like an ulcer on my insides.

They often say that, even when trapped or subjugated, people take great pleasure in certain small freedoms because it makes them feel powerful.

We discuss the murder, Jack Crawford congratulates me, I stare at Vince's brown eyes and slack-jawed skull. He was a singer, or something, his bandmates reported him missing, they found his corpse at the base of a tree. Someone strung him up, butchered him, and cut him down. It makes me sad, but it doesn't profoundly make me grieve. I should: Vince looks like me, late twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, dark skin, long nose and small jaw. He was going places, and now he's rotting. I don't feel anything more than fascination, though not even the morbid kind: just wonder.

Hannibal drives me back to my hotel in uncomfortable silence. I catch him after he buckles his seatbelt, eyes shut lightly as he purses his lips and rests his hands in his lap instead of the steering wheel. Only after he's on the road and he maintains that look of serene indifference do I ask him if he was praying.

"Pardon me?" he asks, inquiring, and I know it's a question that he doesn't expect an answer to. I shrug, despite the fact that his eyes are on the road instead of my shoulders, and I lean my head against the window. I'm so tired. I'm so overwhelmed.

"What, do you think it's futile or something? Why do you sound so adverse?" I ask, embarrassed that I said something stupid, a flush heating my cheeks.

"Not at all. I'm not particularly religious, but I suspect you are. I was simply reflecting—though, I suppose, prayer is nothing more than reflection directed as a conversation rather as a personal soliloquy." He is soft-spoken, deep voiced, his tone reminds me of metal shavings and muddy water. I feel childish compared to him, and it makes me sadder than I already am.

"I'm not that religious either, but I just felt like it would be appropriate. I don't know what else to do: I mean, I do, but I can only do so much." Guilty, ugly, filthy creature: I sound like a troubled teen. He's a psychiatrist, isn't he? A doctor? He dedicated his life to helping other people and pulling their fates from the hands of God and into his own welcoming, sacrosanct arms. I think of The Virgin Mary holding Jesus, limp, in her arms, eyes roving skywards.

"Grieving?" His voice is jarring. "There's no need to mourn. It's not a necessity—though common, not everyone 'mourns.' Acceptance of death is achieved through any form and vehicle and the variability is endless: there is no need to pray, cry, weep or mourn the dead, though it does often help the individual come to terms with it. If you've already accepted his fate and understand the unfortunate situation surrounding his demise…" Dr. Lecter pauses. "My apologies, I'm a little distracted. If you feel as if you may be having a lack of empathy that you would consider a danger to your mental well-being, indifference and unwanted stoicism in situations that usually profoundly affect you and cause you to need to go through procedure to accept is sometimes a sign of depression. It's common in people your age—young adults, to be specific."

His treatment sounds like a panacea, just being able to have him tell me every scathing truth about the world in his awful, dingy voice, like I'm being selected as a prophet: drink in his words like kombucha tea, a cure-all, feel it lace and coat my innards with warmth and sincerity. What I would give to hold an egg in my hand right this second and crack the shell with my fist, feeling the yolk ooze from my fingers: that sort of power over life, over creation, over development and over direction must make him feel _incredible._

I see his hand and I want to hold it, clench his tungsten bones between my fingers until they break. He drops me off at my hotel, a bad first date, an awkward prom night, before he says goodnight and leaves.


	6. plastis wafer

He pours coffee into a glass. It reminds me of drinking Moroccan tea, poured from an arm's length up to finish it with a perfect sea-green foam. I take it, grateful, and I smile as evidently as I can to Dr. Lecter, before I proceed to burn my tongue on it.

"If you'd like sugar or cream, it's available for your use," he reminds me as I make a face, and I nod dismally, resisting the urge to conceal the taste of it with milk and sweetness. Coffee was an adult rite of passage for me, and I feel like I ought to appreciate the bitterness and the somewhat savory aftertaste, even if I don't. He's got a keen palate, I've heard, and I want to impress him with my sense of culinary sophistication. I want to impress him in general, I want him to look at me and pay attention to me and say things while thinking about me. God's great eye burning in the heavens roves down and singes me, specifically: I'm obsessed with the sensation, so iconic in my mind.

I'm going with Dr. Bloom to visit Will Graham later today: it's not on official business, actually, and I doubt Crawford would want me tagging along with her. I'm supposed to avoid him, physically and mentally, to never overlap, and to fear the possibility of our personalities becoming a venn diagram. However, I've been invited to coffee with the man that haunts my thoughts like some freakish eel lurking under the sand of the ocean floor, and I cannot decline. I stare at him, I think about how strange he looks, about how strange he sounds, about how much I hate the pattern of his tie, but I cannot deny anything. He even made me breakfast, I think, and I puncture the membrane of the fried egg to let the vitreous innards flow onto my plate. I feel like I snapped an animal's neck and its lymph is gushing over my hands: I'm vegetarian my default, not by morals. I want to force a turtle onto its back and carve open its stomach. I want to feel powerful, but the idea of deriving power from the expense of another is worrying.

"You should have informed me of your dietary restrictions, Ameya," he comments, voice amiable and soft, "I would have prepared you more food."

And it's true. There's nothing for me to eat here. He quickly made me eggs and toast when I rejected his offer of bacon, sausage, meat. "I didn't want you to go out of your way, it's fine—I can hardly believe you'd do any of this for me at all, in the first place. This kinda service is the sort of thing I see in James Bond movies," I compliment, and he nods, a somewhat controlled movement of his jaw that I have to interpret as a smile crossing over his face as he sips his coffee.

"That's much appreciated. I thought it was the least I can do: you must forgive Jack, he has incredible intentions and is a brilliant man, but I fear that his hesitance to accept you fully is only due to a reluctance of emotional attachment." I stay silent, and I slice through the flesh of a honeydew with my yolk-smeared knife. Ripe and stagnant. Humid. I feel like a melon left to rot on a stem, soft and disgusting. He takes my silence as an indication to continue talking, soft words, high-brow jargon, perfect manners. "He's lost two former agents, one physically, one mentally. He carries their deaths like Atlas' burden, weighing down on his shoulders, nearly impossible to bear alone. It would be a terrible tragedy if you were to ever face either of their fates," he admonishes, and I stare at the flowers that he's arranged in the middle of his table. Tulips with engorged stems, waxy petals—I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm under a microscope, I need to smash this petri dish and get out of here. I fall silent because I don't want to leave, because I want to finish my breakfast and listen to him sympathize with me more. He can't even feel bad for a dead musician with a promising future who had his life stolen from him but he takes the time to make me eggs because I'm a little blue about my new job.

I look at him, and my lips part as I feel my fingers twitch in response to his curling around his spoon to stir his coffee. I wish I had a fan or a handkerchief, I'd drop it on the floor with precision and grace and lift my fingers to cover my lips as he gallantly picks it up for me and hands it back only so I can cover half of my face and obscure my emotion and leave him tantalized and wanting more. I also kind of want to choke him, just to be sure that he has the ability to change expressions from neutral to bemused to annoyed. I want the power that he possesses, the radiant aura that so beautifully curls around his facial features. He is so human, but he radiates _God_, like a rotting piece of nuclear scum is trapped inside his skull. He fascinates me. I hope I fascinate him. This is attraction, lacking sexuality, lacking quixotic idealism: this is the most animalistic sensation I have ever experienced. He is terrifying, but whether because he is terrific or because he instills terror is unknown.

I swallow pensively as he drinks his coffee.

My fingers yearn to do something that isn't nervously tap the table, twist into my shirt or fumble with my silverware. I've known him for three weeks, now, and nothing makes sense. I want him to dissect me and vivisect my abdomen just so I'll be certain he's paying attention to the details that I know are within me.

His eyes meet mine, an indifferent look of companionable silence, and I stare at my plate with such hate and confusion that I feel like a teenager again. Infatuated. I'm hopeless. He is everything I aspire to be, and it terrifies me that perfection is this close.

"Are you feeling all right?" he asks, paternal concern echoing through his tone like an organ's pulsing chords, and I take a shaky breath. His fingers trace across the table, I want to stab a fork through his skin and rip his tendons, but the palm of his hand—dry, cold, lined—lifts to sweep across my forehead.

It feels so sterile. I wish he'd linger, trace a finger across my brow, draw his thumb down my nose. He stands up, takes his hand back, and returns after a few moments with some ice water.

"You have a fever."

I am sweating.

"Perhaps you should cancel your appointment later today to accompany Dr. Bloom."

My eyes fail to focus. "I'm fine," I lie through my teeth, and he smiles.

I'm stuck with him. We live in the same town and we're working on the same case. I will eat as many eggs in his house as I can until he links his fingers with mine and tells me the secrets to his otherworldly piety and sacrosanct aura, how he met with God and had a chat beside his fireplace before God imparted His wisdom onto him which (by proxy) will now be given to me.

Eagle Knights of Tenochtitlan would eat the flesh of their captured enemies in the Flower Wars to ensure their strength was transferred to them as their rite. He is my rite. God's answer is here, and my next goal has been established: I cannot falter. I do not falter.


	7. san francisco

a/n ; does anyone even read this

Despite his well-meaning advice, I respectfully finish my breakfast, carry on a thread-thin conversation with him and inevitably take my leave. He works from home: I think that's really interesting, actually, seeing how much wealth can accumulate to later accommodate your lifestyle like a mold, a cast specifically for you. Office on the first floor, living arrangements on the second and third; he's so antiquated, so quaint, I can hardly imagine why he'd involve himself with the FBI. Stay at home and absorb finery like a sponge and spend more time accumulating evidence of his bourgeois status—why bother with this sort of discomfort?

The way that I envision him to be an anachronism from another era isn't the same way I view the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Dr. Lecter is antiquated, this place is archaic, antediluvian; I expect to see an iron maiden with pulpy bits of flesh clinging to the spines within, evidence of the medieval, barbaric activity that I'm certain transpires in this place. The office was pleasant enough, but the lower I go, the danker it gets. The moisture in the air—condensation, oozing from the pores of the prisoners, from us, from the stone—clings to my skin like a film, and I lick my lips and wipe my brow in a toxic cocktail of apprehension and discomfort as Dr. Chilton escorts Dr. Bloom and me to my predecessor, my test model.

"He's been rather _finicky_ recently," Dr. Chilton comments, his voice tight and nasally, "and I can't seem to get anything down his gullet. He eats like a finch. Peck of this, peck of that—I'm uncertain as to whether or not to classify this as an eating disorder or just him trying to be as difficult as possible." A certain drone accentuates his tone: I think he's been having problems with Will for so long that, as soon as they're normalized and he accepts them as a standard, Mr. Graham probably just finds another way to be a nuisance. And I can see why: Dr. Chilton is far more physically radiant than Dr. Lecter, because even with a limp and a cane and a stiff shoulder, his skin is robust and fair, but he lacks the same practically tangible aura of knowledge, of otherworldly understanding. He's just too human: you can't trust someone so unqualified to unlock your head like a diary. Dr. Lecter's humanity was an afternote portrayed in his hobbies, his faint brushes of emotion, but Dr. Chilton's is portrayed in his flaws and shortcomings. I don't think he's that bad of a person, despite how vehemently Dr. Bloom accuses him of mistreatment, claims that he's a washed up salesman eking his way into the psychological circle. Inefficient, she described, rude, impatient. Those are the marks of a person struggling to help themselves, not their patient.

"He might be sick," Dr. Bloom suggests, and Chilton does everything in his power to shrug despite his shoulder being occupied in supporting his weight down into his cane. A flying buttress holding up a cathedral's massive foundation; in the end, I guess, Chilton is the furthest thing from holy.

"No, no, sick is a good way to describe him," Chilton muses, and I see the lines framing Alana's mouth tighten.

He leaves, Alana glares at him, and he exits the room with the door sliding behind him like bad special effects in _Star Trek_. There's a chair—two, to be exact—in front of a _cage_, akin to the kind that people who dive into the ocean to find sharks use. Shark cage. Will Graham's inside the shark cage, of course, but I hate to think that's him, this is the guy that everyone gets their rocks off to, that even Dr. Lecter seems obsessed with, possessing an unexplainable predilection for. I want to depersonalize this, turn into a stone statue as I listen and he pays no attention to me. Too late, I guess, because Alana turns her head and her curls bob around her face, offering him a smile that exudes illuminated warmth, unspoken affection.

The way she and Will greet each other is sparse though tightly-woven—there's no time to get a word in, not between Will's pinched facial expressions taking the place of his words and Alana's downcast gaze filtering through her eyelashes substitutes for her (undoubtedly worn out) words of condolence. Though not explicitly mournful, I certainly feel like an intrusion—I'd have the decency to manifest some semblance of pity in the dry well of my empathetic capabilities if Will had not almost entirely treated me like he hated me.

"Who's this?" he asks, and his voice already drips with heavy scorn, his diction tainted. The sarcasm that must have been charming when he wasn't accused of being a serial killer soaks his tone. "I'm always _delighted _to see new faces." A grimace churned into something unidentifiable after it becomes spliced with a smile smears across his face: I find myself tepidly hoping for Alana to reprimand him like an unruly child, but she does nothing but furrow her brow and purse her lips.

"Special Agent Ameya Thakore," I state, and I do my best to sound aloof; my inspiration for this piece comes from the specific lilt of Dr. Lecter's voice when he drawls his own name, "_Doc-tor Han-ni-bal Lec-ter._" "I'm working with Jack Crawford in your absence."

"I thought it'd be good for him to meet you," Alana supplies, her voice inserted between the two of us to prevent the inevitable friction; she's so stressed, her pale face tight and drawn, and her skin is like a canvas. Guilt for my actions—not for how I treated Graham but rather how I presented myself to a colleague—prevents me from saying anything further. The desperate, hanging void tipping over the edge of her tongue collapses, and I see the lapse in her stoic professionalism: why are they so adamant about acting like mannequins? "The most progress we made—if you could call it progress _at all_—was with you. The faster we sort out the ripper case means the fast we sort out your own," she hypothesizes aloud, vocalizing the thoughts that drip like mildew from the corners of her hopes.

"Impart my knowledge upon him, then," Will says, like he's actually considering, before he gives a small laugh, a sharp exhale coupled with a smile. "All right. How's this going to work? Let me just tell you all the theories I've already told Crawford, told everyone, so that they can deny it when it comes from _your_ mouth instead of _mine._ Is that a step forward, back, or is that just us keeping our feet planted straight on the ground? I can't really say from this angle."

"I'm doing my best to help," I defend, my voice tight as my throat swells with vain, petty hatred of this man who dares rival my intellect and my place: I've become accustomed to his, and I refuse to let him have it back. I don't like thinking about being second place—this is so much less of a job, now, and more of a rite of passage. He failed, I can succeed: there are people I need to impress. Alana seems sullen, though evidently bitter, that despondent misery settling in her veins like silt. She wrings her fingers, twists the skin around her bones like a ring, before she nods hesitantly.

"We all are. I think…" and she pauses, before nodding, verifying that her decision's stability is rigid, that this ought to transpire, no matter how much it makes her skin prick and her brow furrow and her jaw clench, "I'll leave the two of you alone." She lets her voice age, the tremors flitting from nerve to nerve within both our brains as we do our best to process her intent, and she gives both of us a curt smile, mine rimmed with a pleading sort of aftertaste and Will's with lingering apologies. She leaves, her small heels tapping against the floor like a metronome, and I peer at the empty seat beside me. The openness of this room is suffocating.

"Chilton records everything we say." Will says it so blandly, and when I manage to force my eyes to his, he shrugs and frowns comically, an exaggerated shrug moving expressively under his uniform, bland clothes. "An ongoing experiment. Give him some good data, won't we? Just a couple of hunters chatting about their latest prey—and let me tell you, he is a _slippery bastard._"

There's nothing for me to say without it appearing as an interjection, an unnecessary comment. I nod.

"Intelligent, precise, articulate—these pieces are not arranged through primal instinct and necessity but through an incredibly _human_ predilection with the _artistic._" His words are enunciated, stress visible in the arching muscles in his throat, and his reluctance, I think, has been mistaken for him hiding something. It's uncomfortable for him to talk about, the way he avoids meeting eyes, the way he gesticulates to distract from his words. I nod again.

"The murders always happened in lieu of an event: logically," he nods to me, eyes downcast, "these murders are not random. They are individual works of art—each one is _completely_ different."

"They're not that different," I protest, my voice jejunely cracking, and Will holds a finger before him, sighing.

"Surgical trophies and immaculate precision link them together. An _evident_ knowledge of _inside information_ further links them. Unless Freddie Lounds is an accomplice and feeding him every classified, minute detail of the other crimes being investigated, it's only common sense to assume that the ripper is involved in his own case."

I don't see the connection. Disbelief and unconvinced confusion paints itself over my face, and Will seems frustrated, though patiently so. He jumped from shred to shred, contradicted himself, wove together the shoddiest tapestry he could out of scraps. There is no semblance in his reasoning, but yet the tremors in his voice betray his utter sincerity: he's convinced. Something only _he_ can understand, feel, grasp, but never articulate. He just knows. After all, he would do the same in the ripper's place, and thus can only reason that the ripper must have the same idea.

"You're saying," I begin, slow and steady, balancing needles on their heads, "that the ripper is involved in the case as in he—or she, or they—work for the FBI or are otherwise able to access classified or difficult to obtain information before it is usually released to the public." I meant to slit the abdomen of the topic with a scalpel, shallow, explicitly absolute with perfect precision, but I, essentially, gutted it with a cleaver. Too clumsy: Will is disappointed, though it only registers as a small shake of his head and a sarcastic sneer. Smile. Grin. Not sure yet.

"I said that. What I'm saying _now_ is that I know who the ripper is. Think about it: articulate, assured, intelligent, precise, possessing incredible anatomical and medical knowledge as well as inside information to the details of each of these cases, someone with no motive besides to play _God, _as he does with his other guinea pigs and patients, as he does to everyone he meets." The assurance, the pride: my head feels full, his thymognosis as myopic as ever. I don't understand, and I don't hope to ever. I don't give any indication that I want him to continue, but he does, most likely using those filthy tendrils of empathy and self-awareness to seep into my own head and pry loose every figment of curiosity from my restrained conscience. He would want to know the same, if he was me, but he isn't.

"It's Hannibal Lecter," he says blandly, and I was so immersed in the suspense, the dark, fermented brew of his assurance, that breaking the surface now feels like I've swallowed salt water and my lungs have shriveled.

This is no anagnorisis. How well it settles after the initial, hysteric impulse of shock is troubling.


	8. oxford comma

a/n ; wow my first review! Thank u

I'm in a crisis.

The leering difficulty in processing the wrenching proclamation is like sludge and sewage seeping through my veins; I think, will this be my fatal hadiwist? Will I have yearned to possess the ability to go back in time and warn myself that putting so much trust and invested infatuation into this man will surely lead to my death, my disappearance? I seem to have looked before I jumped, though: how am I supposed to trust a madman, some shambling ex-detective who let it all get to his head? Maybe this is nothing more than a personal vendetta. It would be so satisfying to decree Dr. Lecter the cause of all of this, because, after all, Will must surely feel like it was his therapist's shortcomings that led to this misery he now wallows in.

I put far too much thought into it, I forgot that I'm to only take Will's opinion and empathetic "insights" with a grain of salt. The theatrics may have worked with Crawford, but it doesn't work with me. I see no tangible connection, I could—in no universe—draw a visible conclusion. There are suspicions, there are interpersonal feuds, but there is no evidence to interpret, and that's all I care about.

His conclusion lingers like nothing more than the annoyance of a mosquito bite. The further I go from him and the hospital is the closer I venture to my typical stance: indifferent, aloof, unshakable. The _mise en cine_ of that disgusting place must have torn a hole in the ethos that I so proudly adorn as a cape, a crown, a shawl: Will knows how to get into people's heads and reaffirm his delusions with their reactions. My only voyage into the strangeness of empathy, of understanding and relation to another human, will surely be my last.

I don't like the idea of anyone getting into my head. How clearly he knew to strike for my Achilles' heel worries me.

When I return to the lab, the heavy white sterility helps associate my thoughts, flip through the deck of cards and slip them back into order. I understand, now—after all, with everything so immaculate, I'm certain to notice if anything is amiss and out of the ordinary. The environment truly does influence me: not because I am malleable, but because my thoughts are so contained within me, that contamination is my worst nightmare. I want to be a solemn island, a hateful, stubborn isle with no uninvited guest: I want to be completely alone. This isn't a superiority complex speaking, some stupid profession of me hating to learn from others, but a precaution.

My thoughts get less molded and more mangled. I shake my head and try not to consider the possibility of pride being my hamartia, that I should fall victim to a big ego and a bad case of overshot hubris.

This case is eating me alive unlike any other. I can't even tell why.

"Details on the autopsy report—spick and span, I'd say, not a single hair, fingerprint or any other recognizable trace of DNA left." Beverly Katz maintains an aura that I would say is only rivaled by Dr. Lecter's: I wouldn't say its micawber, not at all, nor macabre. It's simply _sturdy_; indisputably solid, she seems as if she is an unshakable solidity that cannot be swayed by anything but the felled swoop of truth: the erosion wearing away at her ankles of personal relation and suspicion will never make her falter.

I admire her. I nod, offer her a careful smile, and I take the report from her and politely thumb through it, though I've already got a few discrepancies to go over. Jack looks sullen as ever, mouth wide and eyes squinted, Vince's black and blue body drained of fluids and stiff as a board.

"Definitely not a ripper victim," I say, crossing my arms as I so carefully observed Will doing when he lost his patience and was made to explain what he believed to be inherent, "just look at the wound. Jagged, uneven, unprofessional—I doubt the ripper would _regress_ in his precision. It's just a shoddy job, but it's not like it was on purpose. I'd suspect this was a separate killer."

A careful breath, drawn and bated, held in my lungs until it gets stale and my alveoli begin to split at the seams, only released when Katz and Crawford both nod approvingly. Distinguished that all without a sliver of imagination, I looked at the text and the gaudy wound and the evidence and used the variables to generate an answer from my equation: no play-pretend, no acting out Vince's death, no closing my eyes for a dramatic jolt from the tangible world back into his last moments. Clean and simple, professional work that doesn't interfere with me. I'll go home and do as I please; Vince's specter will not follow me.

"It'd be a good guess. I mean, we haven't had any evidence that the ripper works with hallucinatory drugs." She looks at me, and then Jack, and then Vince, and her brilliance seems dimmed when she realizes we have no idea what she's talking about. "The powder, found all over his face? It's obvious that he inhaled plenty of it—it registered as a plant-based hallucinatory drug. It's called _yoyotli_, and it's hard to find outside of Mexico."

It's as if a fishing line snapped: I immediately see a discourse of thoughts after thoughts, so many sources to pull that it's basically a bookshelf toppling over me, and I'd sooner drown in my unspoken information than be able to properly convey it. Somehow, I manage. I'm not sure how, but I get the first word out, and it paints their faces with hideous masks that I can only presume they similarly adorned when Graham said outlandish, freakish hypotheses that were later proven right.

"Obsidian," I say, my hands gesticulating quickly at the red tear etched in his muscle and flesh, "there's obsidian in the wounds. Right? A chip of jadestone in his mouth? Says right here in the file."

Katz parts her lips and her arched brows raise towards her hairline, before she nods, hesitantly. There's that same sort of distant worry clouding her eyes like cream in coffee, and I'll have to explain that I came to this conclusion due to knowledge and evidence, no empathy necessary.

"Jadestone in his mouth, obsidian to carve him open—yoyotli isn't really used as a drug for, say, recreational implementation, it's ritualistic. It's something that sort of inebriates you, calms you down and lessens the pain. It was a sacrifice, obviously, these things are—well, they were—practical procedure for Mexica sacrifices."

"Aztec," Jack supplies, and I feel like running him over with a truck.

"No." I wish Dr. Lecter was here, somehow, his aloof air of intelligence and otherworldly knowledge making everyone feel bad before they even opened their mouth. He could let you know your folly before you even conjured the thought, and his piety just made you want to learn more from him. "Mexica. Tenochtitlan. Aztec is the incorrect term; the Mexica originated from the Aztec, but they've got a deep schism in culture." Though no one is impressed with my tight knowledge of Mesoamerican history, I shakily nod and continue on, "human sacrifices were performed with often semi-willing participants and yoyotli was used to subdue them. Obsidian was the go-to blade because other metals were nonexistent and difficult to come by, jadestone was placed in the mouth or the palm for the deceased to take to the afterlife as payment to entering heaven. Since they were sacrificed, of course, they were spared from Mictlan—which is, I guess, a sort of purgatory—but they still can't just get in. This was even done with sacrifices destined for Tlalocan, which, y'know, is almost their version of heaven, but only in water related deaths. The jadestone was necessary to ensure their death wasn't a waste: it was an exchange." I stop, draw a breath, lick my dry lips and try to avoid eye contact with Beverly or Jack.

They stare at me with a sense of reverent awe that I despise. Don't confuse my practical knowledge and ability to remember what I read out of some dusty volumes at public libraries with some otherworldly, half-assed magic ability to crawl into the killer's head and realize he's some Aztec-obsessed fanatic of maintaining the sacrifice-quo. I knew this because I knew the _facts_, not because I knew how to make up some arguments. I wonder what Graham would have said—lacking all precise nomenclature and terminology, maybe he would have said "the gem represents an exchange, man, they want to repay him for giving up his life and it was his way of letting us know he's sorry. He's a remorseful killer. Look for someone who fits this criteria: …" and then he'd go on forever.

"Jadestone Ripper," Beverly muses, a small smile gracing her pursed lips, and I laugh a little, shaky tremors vibrating from my throat like a cellist's bow coaxing a flat note out of an untuned cello.


	9. making time

"Jadestone Ripper," I declare, a righteous, bombastic testimony of my hard work and brilliant intellect. More accurate than Graham, less invasively dangerous than Lass; I am truly a superstar. Dr. Lecter smiles, bemused, and he looks down at his lap, something I've noticed he tends to do when he speaks to me. He focuses eye contact with almost anyone else, staring straight past their irises into the splotchy, vein-laced backing of their retina, but he tends to be less forward with me. Is this shyness? Or is he just tired from a long day of trying to be intimidating? His approval is all I care about, I'll state my curiosity some other day.

"A creative name. Did you bestow this title upon the murderer yourself?"

"Beverly thought of it, I figured it was clever. This is really interesting, if you think about it; _so_ outdated, _so _impractical, but yet the murderer managed not to leave a trace. If he's so hellbent on killing, why would he do it with an _obsidian blade_? It's a give or take."

"Reformed religion often stubbornly maintains its roots in custom and tradition no matter how impractical, Ameya," he admonishes, his voice soothing my overexcited joy at finally impressing him, dragging a prey back to show it off, and he sighs as he threads fingers through his hair. The casual radiance of the gesture immediately etches a warmth that sews my arteries shut and play with my heart strings like a harp.

"I wouldn't call some mythology 'religion,'" I scoff, but he looks ahead, steady eyes perched on a steady visage.

"All religion could be decreed as mythos by an outsider. My faith in God is not understandable by you, nor anyone else: we all have a very personal relationship with Him. We interpret Him as we see best, and whether He be divided into any different celestial bodies, fused into one, merged into the aspects we can observe on Earth or even decreed as nonexistent, faith and an obsession with a life after death and a meaning to the life we hold now is what drives us to build cathedrals and burn the dead." He turns towards me, and I think I can envision his skull underneath his skin. "This killer is doing God's work; after all, if God intended for the victims to be spared, they wouldn't be dead, would they? It's a test—whether for you, or for me, or the killer, I can't say."

So his victims are to be treated like NPCs in a video game. That names my teeth clench and my jaw lock tight, and I nod hesitantly, feeling my fingers curl and my tailbone rub against the chair's cushion. I sit in his office, books lining the wall like paintings, open air space and cluttered knick-knacks to not look entirely sterile. I have the feeling that we're getting nowhere, and Dr. Lecter's prying into my subconscious isn't as unwanted as Will Graham's, but it's equally unpleasant. I want to pry _him_ open like an oyster and find what meddlesome grains of unpleasant sand have coagulated within him to form a pearl.

"Adieu, then," I muse.

"With God," he translates, and I stand up faster than I meant to and say farewell, this time, in English.


	10. lysergic bliss

a/n ; thanks for the nice reviews. they r very encouragin' to read when I write. If you have any critiques or suggestions as to what should happen/what I should do feel free to share 'em w/ me

My time at Dr. Lecter's feels like an intermission. I was there, poignantly, vividly, submerged in vreare like meat left to marinate. Infatuation, a crush that eats me inside out like a parasite: even now, back into the sterile reality of the autopsy room, surrounded by the dead and the decaying with no one but other FBI agents for company, his radiance makes me nauseous and weak at the knees. Not frail, but immobile: I feel like someone chopped my tendons in two.

"Definitely not Jadestone's work. This incision is _perfect_. A steady hand, a well-sharpened instrument; this is like a surgeon decided to have a go at some Aztec sacrifices. You might also want to note that—despite pre-mortem mutilation being consistent—this victim had his heart _sliced_ out, not torn. Jadestone's was obviously torn." The nickname is affectionate, paltry: maybe Beverly is dehumanizing him not by creating an "it" but by treating him like a pet. That's my stab at pretending to be Dr. Lecter for the day, but I don't need to pretend when he's three feet away from me.

"Quintessentially the Chesapeake Ripper's work," he muses, and I look at him with bright-eyed wonder. Obviously. The evidence lines up, compute it properly and this is what you get: I nod and bite my tongue.

"Yeah, I'd say," Beverly nods, her latexed fingers moving under the victim's jaw to inspect the fine, downy hairs of his face, matted down with nothing but dust. "No drug, no obsidian, no jadestone: I doubt they're related, anyways. Don't put too much stock in trying to relate them because of time or missing hearts, it was probably just a coincidence."

"Two organ-harvesters running amuck," Crawford grimaces through a tight jaw, a polemic hiding behind his stuffy expression of disdain.

"Would it really be too much to anticipate that this _wasn't_ a coincidence?" I say, exasperated, Will's words disfigured and re-presented, a regurgitated mockery of his futile attempts at mysteriousness and my hard-headed desire to be a paragon of justice. But, I mean, this is just what I think. "What are the chances they'd happen back to back? You even told me that ripper murders are _so_ often done in lieu of a specific event and the chances of him knowing to mirror the organ removal while leaving his specific signature are statistically very slim," I venture, and I do my best to sound curt and withdrawn. I place my hands on the autopsy table, leaning forward, intent and focused, etching my own niche in this room to juxtapose Lecter, Crawford and Katz. Rigid, round, relaxed, respectively, and then there's me: poised and prime.

I already promised myself not to allow hubris to become my hamartia. I straighten my back, direct my eyes to the walls as if I've no time to waste on them when their incompetency is holding me back and therefore claiming lives at the hands of mad men.

"I'd say the cases are related. Will Graham told me-"

And the forbidden word ruins any sort of spell I've managed to cast over them: Crawford's entire visage melts like a squashed, soft candle, _aghast_ that I would consult with He Who Must Be Forgotten. Before he opens his mouth like a frog ready to catch flies and proclaim that I'm fired, I'm discharged, whatever, Katz smoothes the situation over like a mere rumple in stiff fabric. Her voice pushes through, determined, chipper and headstrong, "He told you about suspicions that the Ripper being able to access inside information and therefore mimic the cases being investigated. Yeah, I considered that too, but this was literally released_ three days ago_."

"One day to plan, one day to anticipate and one day to act," he says, and I suddenly realize why I had so wearily anticipated hearing Dr. Lecter speak about the situation. Is this situational irony, is an inaudible laughtrack being played to mock me and my inability to listen to Will Graham and see the murderer right in front of me? He is a man of God, and he already noted that interfering with the natural course of events between me and this murderer's capture would be upsetting a test that has so kindly been laid out for me. Even if he was capable of murder—which I doubt, which I detest to consider—he would not interfere with this particular case. I know him too well.

Or maybe I don't—the parts of his personality that I have not examined are simply molded out of my own thought and inference and patched. The submerged quarter that I have yet to observe could be anything—Schrodinger's Cat, I guess. I won't know until I see it: and until I see it, I consider every possibility.

I consider Crawford as the Chesapeake Ripper. He's too gawky, awkward, brutish—he doesn't have the precision or the patience or even background. Katz? I doubt it—her internal love for old fashioned morality literally beams from her like a radiant halo. Lecter, then? Of course not: there is no logical reason for why he would want to do something this obscene.

"Either way, the Ripper wanted to make himself known; he didn't want to be responsible for Jadestone's sloppy work," Katz concludes, stripping the latex gloves off her hands like skin and tossing them into the trash. "I'm almost certain we should expect more victims courtesy of Jadestone. I mean, if what Ameya's theorizing holds any water, then there's going to be enough heads to line a temple's stairs before he considers himself done."

I nod, the weight pressing down on my spine and squeezing fluids from the vertebrae like a sponge, the horrendous capacity of _responsibility_ threatening to drown me. I don't care about the lives to be saved or lost, the money to be made and spent, but I do care about my reputation. Dr. Lecter's eyes are on me, luminous and almost gaudy-colored, and I can't disappoint.

They continue. Katz goes over specifics, Dr. Lecter provides the detailed medical insight and helps draw a few more obtuse conclusions, Jack looks impatient and unsatisfied. Prying words from me rips nails and breaks bones: I'm so hesitant to speak unless I can be entirely certain of my words. I don't want to be like Graham, throwing darts in the dark, I want to be a computer, precise and perfect. I want to be perfect. I am not perfect, I decide: when Katz and Dr. Lecter leave, Katz chattering like a lark and Dr. Lecter's heels thudding against the floor like a metronome to keep her steady, Jack decides it's time to remind me of the first rule he's established.

"Do not speak to Will Graham," he hisses, words wrung from his throat like an arrow flung from a bow, and I nod. Shameful, obedient, I hate being reprimanded even when I know that I am right. How am I supposed to set a standard if I can't even decipher what my standard is?

"I won't, sir, I'm sorry. I asked for insight on the Ripper case, and he didn't give me much help, so I know better—now, of course—than to talk to him." I withhold the part about Dr. Lecter, the wavering suspicion that lingered in the air. It's unspoken, however, and the melancholy, pleading look for me not to get involved rings as clear as a cathedral's bell. I don't understand. If Will, his top agent, his go-to miracle, pointed fingers at Dr. Lecter, why didn't Jack investigate? Personal vendettas, he said, were lethal to justice.

Jack hasn't said anything. His face is sullen and ashen, pockmarked cheeks sagging from a worn skull and tired eyes. "I won't, sir. I promise," I say, as if my assurance actually means much more than a few faulty words.

My word, for all its worth, seems to convince him—though I doubt this is the case, I figure he just doesn't know what else to do with me. Solemn and sluggish, he gives me a nod of his head, leaving me to my company.


	11. id engager

I want to sink into this chair.

I nearly anticipate a pulse underneath the arms of the leather, flayed flesh, a sacrifice as testament to the magnificent weight of human evolution. Quasi-respectful, I think, that something should, in death, become a chair. It's an expensive chair, but it's still just a chair.

It's our right as conquerors; we domesticate animals, hunt them, kill them, eat them, and the power sustained only further establishes our place as the true owners of this Earth. My vegetarian palate, however, can only fantasize about the prodigious power that must come from Thyestean destruction, to consume something that you know could kill you. I don't dwell on it more than necessary; the romanticized air rolling through my brain like a perfumed breath is quickly quelled by the scientific sterility of the reality of eating: energy transfer. Decay back into the recycled circle of preservation of organic matter. There's nothing inspiring or idealistic about biological processes.

The constant ebb and flow of my whims dragging me down to the depths of the most despicable realms of fantasy and falsified caprices before I'm surfacing into the biting wind of the sterile _reality_ of the nature of my work is driving me crazy. Not literally, of course: I'm not a nut case, I'm not going to end up in the hospital under Dr. Chilton's watchful eye and sterile white hospital lights. I cling to therapy sessions like life vests in a swampy ocean.

The exhaustion rots at my bones and makes itself tangible as bruised halos framing my eyes like a crown I wish would adorn my head, sallow skin and shallow breaths. I severely underestimated how taxing this job would be, a constant erosion at my faith in humanity, a musician plucking at strings on a mandolin and severing cords acting as my hope in God's mercy. Even with this misery, I'm keenly aware of the various barriers erected between me and my work, and my disdain for Will inevitably, like an alchemist turning lead to gold, melts to pity. Sympathy. I wouldn't say I empathize, I understand or I relate to him, but I know. I know very well.

Alana Bloom has auburn curls that bob around her slender, swan-like neck. Her presence is eternally more soothing than Dr. Lecter; fluid, relaxed, compassionate and invested, the need to record my minute movements and anticipate reactions to my actions and decree them favorable and hospitable or distrustful and disgusted dissipates. You poise yourself to talk to Dr. Lecter: with Dr. Bloom, I'm malleable as pure gold. She has quips, cues, little nods of the head and ways to look at me with almost maternal affection that get me to spill it all.

She asks me how I'm handling everything, and I say the opposite of what I typically tell Dr. Lecter. Patient confidentiality, of course, prohibits her from telling him.

"The reality of a situation can never be gauged with artificial substitution—practice, tests and simulations will never prepare you for the weighty _realness_ of this work. Not everyone is meant for it," she soothes, doing her best to insulate the gentle suggestion of "you ought to quit," and she exhales carefully, her collarbones bending inwards as her chest deflates.

"I worked this hard to get here. I'm not going to give up. It's just taking some getting used to," I retort, my voice astringently resistant to her kindness. She nods, face blank and the color of talc.

"I understand. Take your health into consideration. Deciding to stay in the FBI in a different sect instead of a special investigator might suit you just as well as this current job." Implying that I fit this position, fill in this Will Graham-shaped gap. "Don't worry about your safety, though," she stresses, the slightest tarnishing of warning marring her green eyes. I might be unhealthy, depressed, anxious, but I will be safe: I won't be dangerous, like Will Graham, incited to commit the terrors I strove to prohibit. I will not be harmed or targeted. This is just a simulation, and I can back out of it at any time.

Dr. Lecter's greatest fear was me chewing on my nails when I visited him, mistaking bloody fingertips for anxiety produced from work-related stress rather than the natural reaction to being in his presence: Alana fears for my moral compass.

"Your personal life is strictly to be divided from your work. They don't interlap! That's such a surefire way of letting work-related misery and stress ruin your daily routine," she presses, further venturing, "and I recommend that you ensure you've got solid hobbies. Anything in particular? Nothing _passive_, like reading. Let's try to get you to divide your surroundings into three separate hemispheres: work, home and leisure."

The idea is nice. I, however, admit I have no hobbies. I studied, then I worked, then I trained, and now I investigate.

She nods. Closed eyes, closed mouth, soft expression: she isn't angry. "Spend time with other people, then, people who don't work with you. Not me, not Jack, not Beverly..."

As if I'd willingly spend time with Jack Crawford.

"…Not me, not Dr. Lecter."

It's an impulse reaction, an indignant frown and a furrowed brow. Concentration easily to be mistaken for anger: I just can't help seizing up when I hear his name. I'm still so captivated, still so hyper-aware of every interaction we have.

I replay our last conversation over Dr. Bloom's voice. Something about orchestras, I guess, how he detests that people could confuse a violin and a viola, a clever joke about bass as in the instrument versus bass as in the fish, polite, stifled laughter and hands hung at his sides. "That's too bad," I say, my voice lax and bitter, distant and detached in my quest for total apathy. His name hangs in my head like a funeral wreath draped around a stone angel's neck; his words are a pleasant roucoulement, diction laced as tight as a tapestry: I can't fathom a world devoid of him and his perfect presence. It's more than a daydream, it's a fantasy.

"Too bad," she repeats, spinning silk and making a puzzle like a spider. She uses the same enunciation, the same nod and tilt of the head. I wonder why she decided to select his name last, make him the end of a row of books, the final word in a thought—I mean, I _know_ why, but I _wonder_ why she thought this was appropriate.

"This is," she clarifies, "your therapy session." Holds her hands up, a polite gesture of surrender. "But I have something to tell you."

"Shoot."

"When I was little, I was in Model United Nations. Pretty standard stuff—high school after school club, if you don't know. It's based around debating. Political simulation." Her exposition is standard, padding for the truth she strives to reveal. "We had a policy: _No MUNcest_. No one in the program could date another person in the program." A scoff, a wry smile, she twists the ring on her hand in a gesture of humility and nervousness despite the fact that her eyes are steady on mine. "It was for professionalism. You have the relationship, you break up: would you be able to maintain the aura of business partners, of comrades or opponents in a debate? It was better to just be…separate."

"You think I'm going to actually be eloquent and straightforward enough to _establish_ a relationship with Dr. Lecter and then _end it_," I say in disbelief, frustrated at her euphemisms and paltry comparisons to my vivid dilemma, but she grins, holding her hands up in a silent gesture of _I got you._

She coaxed it out of me. I feel stupid, like I fell for the trap, a rat in a maze who thought it had the whole world only to get the walls broken down and eye-fulls of the white laboratory surrounding him. Alana is clever, I admit, though she is disgustingly frustrating.

"Hannibal is not a very…relationship oriented person," she confines, the dropping of his proper title almost assuring me that he can hear the twinges of disrespect ruining my ethos. "Trying to pursue someone almost twenty years older than you will be frustrating and the inability to remain professional at work will tarnish the atmosphere."

"Who says I was going to?" I snap, defensive, and the tepid buds of humiliation bloom in my skin. Gooseflesh: I'm suddenly cold, despite how warm my face is, and I gag as I attempt to swallow, my saliva sticky and tacky. Tastes like rot: I am _rotting_. This obsession is decaying and maiming me beyond recognition; how pathetic would I see myself if I caught a glimpse of what I've become? I work for myself and strive for self-gain, not for others.

Other people were never a variable in the equation that I anticipated would lead my life.

"I just don't want you to be disappointed," she affirms. A nod of her head, she extends her hand slightly to rest atop mine, milk-pale skin and pale manicured nails. The contrast makes me think she's a ghost.

In context, I don't know what she thought I would be disappointed in. Would I be disappointed in him, in myself, in his actions, in my actions to his actions, in what we'd make, in the situation we'd form? I am already disappointed, I thought as I said goodbye and walked out the door, so I'll take this chance for a tiny scrap of _meaning._


	12. gronlandic edit

I think I was told to stay away from her, but I was also told to stay away from Will Graham, and I've visited him thrice this week.

Freddie Lounds keeps her air of eccentricity and non-conformity even in her best reporter stance—she says she'll write only about what she jots down and only share the information I explicitly permit her to, but I know that she's got a tape recorder in her purse and I know that she really doesn't care.

Obstruction of justice, I can practically hear delivered from her gracious voice, is in not doing my part in informing the public. Goodness is a concept, Mr. Thakore, and concepts must be reached through proof and solidity. My idealization of "goodness" is less "justice" than it is "truth." You deliver the verdicts and I will inform the world of them—we go hand in hand, you know. If I wanted quick money, I'd become a politician—I want to make a _difference_.

I can't deduce whether that difference is accidentally informing a killer of their imminent arrest so that they can high-tail it before we find them or if it's keeping the world informed of the evils that humanity is capable of. Either way, I suppose, it really does level the playing field. If our "jadestone ripper" is as destitute as he seems and as Dr. Lecter predicted, the chances of him scrolling through tattlecrime and coming upon his very own article seem incredibly slim.

Her curls bounce around her face as she nods, pursed lips and rosy red cheeks, bright, big eyes that reflect my own apathy back at me. "You are _actual_ FBI, however," she confirms, and I nod.

"Yes. Unlike Will Graham, I am _authentic_ FBI," I drawl, leaning further back in my chair. This is the worst setting. She invited me to lunch, took me to a noisy café, asked me questions and then looped all the questions I asked her back to me. It's like stringing a needle with thread, and she's ready to embroider her story of the century: _unhappy looking Indian boy takes Will Graham's place as a very unqualified replacement because he's too busy dealing with his sad feelings, but at least he's not crazy, or so we think._

"Cheers, then, to hoping that you don't end up gutting a few people during your time employed," she lilts, voice light and effervescent, lifting her coffee as I fumble to reach mine in time without looking delayed. I want to tell her something about toasts not working like this, but I say nothing.

"I'll do my best, I guess," I mumble, my words bubbles through my coffee. She sips, sighs, taps her pen twice and looks over her shoulder. I think she has this down to a routine. I pick up the physical cues, but I can't make sense of them: doing something with clear intent, most likely to find a softer way to deliver a pressing question due to her fidgeting acting as a distraction or an act of casual camaraderie that's supposed to make me comfortable—but why? And what's she even going to ask? What's her deal with this "myopic morality" jab? I start to sink back into my comfortable place as a turtle staring out of its shell at the world around it when she seizes my current blurry-eyed stare of confusion and dismal wonder by the neck and hauls it out from its safety.

"Tell me about the case you're currently investigating," she says, curt, leg crossed as she stares in my general direction but seems to focus on my ear rather than my actual eyes. I stare back, aiming a little better with my sight set exactly on her eyebrows instead of her eyes, and I shrug. I have no idea. It takes me a moment: what _am _I doing?

"That's classified," I say, and I don't even know why I bother, because the next few minutes is me going over what we've discovered: religious killer, rooted in Aztec (I say it instead of Mexica because I don't feel like having a history lesson with her) culture, sloppy work and the trademark jadestone left like a signature on a piece of artwork. More like a kid's fingerprint on the back of their kindergarten project—these murders are _really_ stupid.

She nods, writes, fidgets and stares at various parts of my face. She smiles when I say things that are pseudo-funny and quickly darkens into a grave mien when I say things that regard gory details or sad, mourning relatives. Like a conductor steering an orchestra to perfection, I use my voice to drag her through crescendos and diminuendos galore—she goes along with it, even offering a bubbly laugh when I say something particularly absurd or gently placing her hand over mine when I wrench out a few sad sighs. It's all an exchange, though, because the better she does with her acting, the more she demands of me with her inquiries.

"But what about you?" she murmurs after I describe how Nina Twinning's parents are offering reward money for people who have information regarding her killer, "how are you handling this?" Her eyes briefly meet mine, and the sincerity makes me flinch and drop my gaze to the tabletop. I liked her more when she pretended to care about me, not when she asked things with genuine intent.

"I'm fine…I guess. I mean, I'm not going to go nuts and start carving people open myself, but I am sad. It's sad stuff, you know, seeing all these people who are—essentially—my age die so young. It all doesn't seem fair," I prattle, realizing how stale my words sound, and none of it really sinks in. Sad. It's sad. Yes, these murders in which people have their organs stolen are sad.

"I can't empathize with the killer," I admit. She looks confused, and reminds me that I was chosen specifically _because_ I don't attempt to use empathy to connect with and profile the killer. Not having empathy only makes sense.

"No, what I mean is, I can hardly comprehend why they'd go about this kind of thing. He's harming himself—and others—for…others? These are all religiously-motivated murders with what we anticipate the goal being to sustain humanity, or so they believe. So he risks arrest, kills others, but does it with the sake of keeping everyone else alive or healthy?" I shake my head—it just feels disjointed, a loose end, and Freddie seems bewildered that it doesn't make sense to me.

"He thinks that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," she offers, and I think more about the fact that she just quoted _Star Trek_ rather than the pressing obviousness. He does it out of goodness and his love for others to the point where he is so determined to keep this earth alive that he will hurt the people who he so truly cares for.

I mean, what else could that be? Who would do something obviously wrong because the ultimate goal is obviously right? Why would any deity set that as the path for a mortal to tread in their quest for heaven? Either way, avoidance or participation, a sin is committed. You can't get out of this rut.

Human life cannot be weighed like coins in an exchange, but yet, I feel deep within me, some lives are truly worth more than others.


	13. hegira émigré

I notice the repetition of "I feel" as in it boils under my flesh and I refuse to make it evident. I narrate all my experiences like a constantly spinning reel of film in my skull, meekly keep thoughts hidden under a bitter scowl and lots of time spent looking at my feet. How I feel twists and turns like a burning coil of incense turning into ash inside of me, and often times, I fail to differentiate between my emotions, like I'm an outside observer of inner turmoil. The separation and self-awareness I experience makes me believe that my id and ego really did grow legs and run in opposite directions.

I'm going to assume that this peculiarity of an identity crisis is the exact same thing that Will Graham let fracture him: he became a killer and I became myself, I suppose, versus who I aspired to be.

It's not as bad, but it's suffering. I selfishly mull over my bitterness and qualms with life, wringing my hands in an attempt to remind myself that my physical body and mental energy are still connected. I wanted to be better—I am a month in, and I seem to be trodding down the same well-worn path. I feel betrayed by my own lack of talent, that maybe I'm being a pawn instead of a player and taking charge, that the trickle-down effect of stress drips onto my shoulders and sets like mold. I feel useless and empty. I had so much purpose: did I really grow up just to give mediocre consultation on crimes, is this what evolution and the spinning Earth wove like a tapestry, did God make man in His image so that I could be sad and scrubby?

_How does that make you feel_? I hear the phrase in a voice I can't place. I reach up to card a few fingers through my hair, feel my scalp, bite my lip. I want a purpose more than anything. I want to know true morality and goodness. I do as I'm told, I don't do as I want.

I feel very, very disappointed in almost everything. _Almost._

"Such slovenly work; these poor folk died painful deaths, though—as the word _sacrifice_ entails—the intent was above the mortal concept of pain and agony," Dr. Lecter muses, hand hidden beneath luminous latex gesturing to the tear in the woman's chest. How calm. How poised. I feel safe in his presence. I _feel_ in his presence, I experience luxurious bouts of entrancing emotion and quixotic, fantastical hopes and wishes. He controls my mood like the moon looking over the ebb and flow of the ocean; the fact that he exerts so much power over _me _of all people without even laying a finger on me is ethereal. His words and actions seem nothing more than gratifying.

"You know this is the same killer: _incredibly_ inexperienced is right. He's leaving plenty of evidence—finger prints, hand spreads, body fluids—the only thing is, we can't identify him! They don't match anything that we have, and it's not like we can just shoot into the ocean and hope to nail a fish." I think his name is Zeller, or something, and he looks disappointed to have all the pieces in front of him but nothing to paste them on.

"Any thoughts on where to start?" Beverly asks, hands crossed, eyebrow elegantly arched, and all eyes swivel in my direction. The picture comes into focus, two blurry images melting into one: they're talking to me. Tangibly here, present and hearing, a living breathing human that other people recognize and are forced to process. Even Dr. Lecter must be looking at me, thinking about me, regarding me; my voice skips, bubbles growing in my throat, before I clear my airway and hum a little in acknowledgement.

"Look for younger people. Older folks tend not to have the same drive even in regards to spirituality—well, I mean, not enough to kill. I'd say he's younger than twenty five—old enough to know the consequences and old enough to make his decision as to either do his…his 'job,' I guess, and risk getting caught or shirk his duties, but young enough to have no idea how to go about them. I doubt he has a set family, and he might even be underage, so there's no real way to check up on records. Given that I'm _assuming_ these killings are done with the intent of _religious sacrifice_, examining individuals who have a distinct absence in churches would make sense. I mean, he's got his own brand of God, he doesn't probably like the mainstream version." My voice dwindles in importance. This profile is a mess. Too preoccupied with my own world ripping in half like water-logged newspaper to actually do my job.

I'm embarrassed. I feel ashamed. I nod with fierce intent at no one in particular, turning towards Dr. Lecter and blinking, watching his shallow eyes stare back at me and nod as well.

"Either way, if he truly is in such a destitute situation as to be young man with no purpose and goal other than to carry out his godly plan, I'm certain he wouldn't have the willpower to maintain a job or proper residence. Homeless, I suppose, or living in a shelter."

"He can't go far, and we know that. He's trying to space the murders out, but you can only go so far on foot," Crawford amends, accepting Hannibal's hypothesis like a hundred dollar check, and my skin crawls off my bones and melts into a fatty puddle under the drain that catches the blood from the autopsies. I am gone. I wish I was smart, I mourn, lamenting my own shortcomings as Dr. Lecter smiles, placing his fingers on my shoulder.

Nothing touches, I remind myself, thinking back to when Dr. Bloom's cool hands graced my own like a goddess laying fragrant petals before me as an offering. He doesn't grip, shake, do anything amiable; I hear him throw my name into the bowl as a sidenote, I suppose, to his conclusions, crediting me in his bibliography, a brief moment of recognition, and they all begin to talk amongst themselves, voices increasing in volume and urgency as Dr. Lecter's hand drifts back to his side.

I wonder what my emotion would look like if it was physically etched on my face. My eyes bulge out, just a little, before they roll back and sink into my skull and vanish. I stand there and no one notices me, which I gladly reciprocate by staring at my brain and refusing to notice them.

Empathy, I grind my teeth as I think of it, is what is preventing me from doing this. From helping. From caring. From attaining. I can't understand them, I can't pity the dead, I can't even begin to imagine what Dr. Lecter is made of or how he manifested from gold and pearls to the saint he is.

Will Graham's words are astringent and leave a taste of rot in my mouth like bacteria coagulating into ulcers and plaque. I am seldom wrong, and when I am, I had previously known the right answer because my selection was only made because I _wanted_ it to be right even if I knew it was false. Confusing, unrealistic, non-scientific and not predictable—are "gut-feelings" just a cliché that people use to justify their lucky guesses or do my intestines really have a better brain than me?

Time flies, literally, a terrified bird tearing its way out of a cage, and I realize that I am still in the same place and everyone is gone when Dr. Lecter bids Jack farewell and places his hand on my shoulder once more.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention," I choke, tripping over my words, and I make a few strangled, gooey sounds in my throat as he smiles the slightest bit and shrugs on his coat.

"Nothing to be sorry about, Ameya," he comforts me, and his hand brushes stray hairs falling on my forehead to their typical residence behind my ear. He says goodnight, walks out the door, nods at those he passes as he departs.

I know how I feel.

The budding head of _razbliuto_ occupies majority of the space in my brain. There is nothing left to do but wait for it to bloom, wilt, and die.


	14. gallery piece

A/N pls review or critique me. Not sure what im doing. How is this even supposed to end. I don't know where im going

I always wondered "how" and "when" the incident was conceived and planned, but I'm especially stuck on the way it was implemented: this required much more knowledge than you'd anticipate was easily available to the public. Did Freddie Lounds slide it under the table for an exclusive interview, did it get leaked, am I just not careful enough with my public image? Either way, I suppose, human determination has no limits, fiscal or physical.

I should be honored, now that I think of it. This case lingered on me like cigarette smoke, and the more I read into it, the more I realized that sacrificial victims aren't just pigs for slaughter; a thusia is chosen with utmost care and intent, revered as the God's flesh and blood manifested on Earth. You eat and drink the body of Christ in church, so I don't see how this is much different. Part of me supposed that it was my fate to die like this.

The Jadestone Ripper isn't as terrifying as I thought. Despite overwhelming evidence, my mind only conjured sloppy images of lopsided hunchbacks wielding rusty saws and bloodlust, carving people like glasgow grins ripped across pumpkins while chanting to anything that would bother to listen. He rang my doorbell just like anyone else would, meek and frail looking, a bird-like teenager with big brown eyes and a trembling lip. He spoke to me—it was palaver, the sort of shavings that you brush off the table and forget about until the end of time, nothing like the conversations I indulged in with the more meaningful individuals I've interacted with. I had half a mind to shut the door in his face and tell him I wasn't interested in whatever he was trying to persuade me to do when he said his name.

It sounded like Will Graham's voice when he told me the identity of the Chesapeake Ripper. Steady, slow, enunciated and perfect, every syllable rolled off his tongue with utter grace and intent, and that same tightening overcoming my tendons and limbs like a tourniquet choking the life out of a heretic dripped into my guts like lead.

_Cozcatl_. It lingers with the same sound as "Hannibal," the sound of tongue perched against teeth. He blows dust into my face, the substance being none other than the _yoyotli_ that Beverly Katz had so expertly identified in the first autopsy we conducted together, and my double-vision conscious splits further like cells squirming to get away from each other after mitosis.

The groggy film that is delivered when sleep melds with waking grows over me like a steady mildew and mold; I turn my head and feel the veins in my neck stretch alongside my tendons, the slippery slide of muscle under flesh worrying me more than the rest of the situation. I clearly see Alana Bloom on my couch even when Cozcatl's hands hold my jaw and align my head properly, the image etched on the ceiling. "How does that make you feel?" she asks, companionable, curious, and my mouth is too dry to answer.

Hallucinations are supposed to be frightening. Mine are so banal. Is it wrong to be angry that I'm denied even the slightest bit of extravagant luxury when I'm so close to death? The drug is ruining my priorities, shuffling them like cards with splitting cardboard corners.

Cozcatl is shorter than me—I doubt that's his real name, but I don't have much else to go off of. I could move if I really wanted, but I'm so disgusted by the injustice delivered to me through my paltry delusions that I stay still. I'm the twenty-first century ambassador of peace: my position as a sacrifice is only going to open up a new era for earth of better _everything_. I feel my fingers curl even if I stare at them flat on the floor.

"I could help you get closer to God," Cozcatl frets, his voice tremulous and agitated, and I've suddenly got a spotty shred of vision that I know doesn't belong to me: Will Graham worked on a case about a man who thought he could carve people into angels to protect him, right? So is this the empathy that he feels? I had a grand four seconds in his place, bulky glasses and itchy facial hair and uncomfortable standing as I stared at some stupid crime scene that the real me could have deduced front and back in a matter of seconds. I hate him.

It smells like flowers, but flowers have always reminded me of the smell of rotting fruit. His hands are clammy when they clamp around my throat and try to fix the position of my head again, thin fingers and a wide palm, and he sets something beside my head with a loud "clack." I thought he shot me, but eyes grow out of my ears and I clearly see what it is: jadestone. A nice lump. It's bigger than the ones we've been finding in people's mouths, so maybe I'm special.

"I know you."

"You know me?" I affirm, groggy, my voice coming out in drowsy drips, and he pulls at the buttons of my shirt with increasing urgency.

"I've _known_ you," he corrects, and I watch him through seven pairs of cracked glasses as he sits beside me and places his hand on my chest. His words make sense; I accept them, and he's suddenly my friend, and the trust I hold for him is growing like an ulcer. I know him. We know each other.

"I'm here to help you," he soothes, and I would have assumed he was a doctor if his voice didn't warble so much. He looks desperate, frightened, and I almost reach up and give his shoulder a reaffirming squeeze. "It's better this way. I know how hard you're taking this, how much you want to make a difference—action isn't only performed on this physical realm. You want to escape from a cycle and be more than biological mass, be more than matter, and we all understand that," he affirms, and my vision starts vanishing. I hear him with all of my senses, his words sinking through my skin and floating like oil in my blood. "Not a martyr. Not someone self absorbed. You've never been like that—your struggles are not for you to overcome by reaching the opposite. Just because you lack something doesn't mean you should attain it. You are fine the way you are—the rest of humanity is here to make you into something worth giving to God." He's said so much more than this, but I don't remember any of it.

I disagree. His reasoning is shallow. If I don't struggle, then I might as well just die. What's there to life except gaining experience? Just because he wants to make me poignant doesn't mean he can let me stagnant. I can be poignant through my own achievement.

"The most sublime feeling in the world is to take the burdens of another," he explains, and I hear a tangible, visible, audible "crunch" of my skin shredding. He drags whatever he's holding over my ribs like a kid trailing a stick over a fence. Blood smells like rust, and I can taste it bubbling in the back of my throat like syrup, and my dual vision suddenly comes into focus—I'm so certain that I will die.

_Cozcatl_ means jeweled collar. He's not even a person, I think, just a dog carrying out some commands. That's so pathetic, to live your life with the only impetus being the pleasure of another.

The catalyst for my greatness will be none other than me myself, not my blood spilled in honor of someone better.

The door slams open, a vibrant thunderclap to warn this mismatched messiah of his impending ruin. Either he's a sham, or God didn't think I was worth the effort.


End file.
